ABOUT THE BOOK

n e (i) t h e r : poems on passions & peregrinations gathers mostly unpublished poems which have been composed fitfully over the last many years. The book contains reflexive, agonistic, angry, dissenting, conscienticized, and at times playful ruminations on selected aspects of our multilayered individual and collective existence, in a language that may be contemplative, but may also be trenchant and delirious. The collection, as the title suggests, attempts to fulfill a two-fold task: to give vent to the entanglements between, among other things, successes and tribulations, the real and the ideal, or the universal and the psychical; and to memorialize varying degrees of attachment, however transitory, to places and situations – from the enigmatic but all-too-familiar streets of Krus na Ligas and Tandang Sora to the labyrinthine alleyways of Alfama in Lisbon. Overall, the poetic voice indulges in the exuberant celebration of the self, the relentless interrogation of the commonsensical, the ever incomplete and desperate attempt to capture solitude in a foreign land, and the indictment of tendencies and institutions that have made our planetary presence all but unbearable. n e (i) t h e r is really a raging provocation against a world that has sunk into complaisance and complacency.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Currently dean of the Asian Center, Noel Christian Moratilla has published poems in international and national journals and literary magazines including Philippine Humanities Review, Diliman Review, Asian Studies: Journal of Critical Perspectives on Asia, voice & verse, and Anak Sastra. As a faculty member, Noel has earned recognition for his research and mentorship, including the One UP Professorial Chair and the UP Diliman Centennial Professorial Chair awards. His research interests include social movements, diaspora, postcolonial studies, Marxist studies, and critical pedagogies. He previously served as coordinator of the University’s TriCollege PhD Philippine Studies Program and as deputy director of the UP System’s Office of International Linkages. He was a 2018 research fellow in the Asian Culture Center, Gwangju, South Korea, which published his research (entirely in Korean) on religious rituals in the Philippines.

n e (i) t h e r: poems on passions & peregrinations is his first book of poetry.